Tell me if I’m seeing this correctly: thump and his minis (I’m lookin’ at you, Rudy) are running around pre-emptively saying what they are or aren’t going to do when <FITB>*, and what recourse the president might or might not have, or how they will react if Mueller does one thing or another… but I don’t see Mueller overtly throwing down any gauntlet. He and his tightly buttoned-up crew are going quietly about their task, behind closed doors, not leaking anything. I see thump tilting at hypothetical windmills located where he thinks there are going to be windmills, but the windmills are still being assembled at the windmill factory. Right now, he’s waving his dinky sword in the air.
People are complaining that this investigation is taking too long, but the longer it takes and the larger Mueller’s silence looms, the crazier it makes thump and the dumber he reveals himself to be. Win-win.
*Fill in the blank
I would prefer him on the stand. Let his need to be able to (he thinks) outsmart everyone come back and bite him in the Cheeto-dust covered ass while racking up the charges of perjury.
If I am glad for one thing (the one thing that is my main weapon again the Elmer Disciples like asahi), it’s that almost everyone involved in this total and complete bumfuck is a total and complete idiot, pretty much without exception. IOW, I am glad that we didn’t get someone who actually knows what they are doing (when they try to screw over the rest of the country).
Well, yeah. So I don’t quite see how granting pardons protects the A-HF from the evidence that could be obtained from the pardonees who were compelled to cooperate going forward.
Looks like kinda a double edged sword. If they doesn’t pardon them, he risks that they might get a plea deal and roll over on him. If they do get pardoned, they can’t plead the Fifth, so could be dangerous in court in a whole nother way. Good.
(IMHO, a President should not be able to pardon anyone in his administration, his campaign organization, or any member of congress.)
Compared to Benghazi and Whitewater and other “let’s get the Clintons” fake “investigations”, this Meuller investigation hasn’t taken any time at all. It’s also yielded many indictments and several Guilty pleas already. So this “it is taking too long” is just another fucking lie.
Now I wanna see what develops over the new “I can obstruct all I want and pardon myself and everybody else” shit. Fuck that. I hope Meuller is giving everything to the state AGs too, where a federal pardon is worthless.
[ul]
[li]Racketeering[/li][li]Money laundering[/li][li]Conspiracy to defraud the USA - election plus Russians[/li][li]Conspiracy to commit treason - election plus Russians[/li][li]Tax fraud - still waiting for the tax returns[/li][li]Self dealing[/li][li]Misuse/diversion of campaign money[/li][li]Fraud pertaining to “charities”[/li][li]Conspiracy to commit treason - Manipulating or sabotaging trade and defense treaties for his own (or Ivanka’s) profit[/li][li]Violations of the Emoluments Clause[/li][/ul]
etc etc etc.
The guy is dirty as fuck, and so are his cronies and kids.
Ok, say Manafort takes a pardon as a signal that he will also be pardoned if he refuses to cooperate with Mueller. Mueller charges him, then Trump pardons Manafort.
Mueller says “Aha, now you have to testify because you can’t take the 5th!”
Trump preemptively pardons Manafort for contempt.
Manafort says “go fuck yourself Bobby.”
I don’t see how you can compel cooperation from someone that the president will abuse his power to protect.
Even easier: Trump holds all pardons until the trial and sentencing are over. Manafort (or whoever) clams up, pleads the Fifth and takes the fall. Pardon, and he gets off scot-free. (Except for state charges)
Mueller turns over all of the information to the New York state prosecutor and Manafort gets tried in state court, over which Trump has no jurisdiction.
I don’t think you can pardon contempt charges, because they aren’t criminal. They’re procedural. Meaning Manafort could spend the rest of his life in jail if he doesn’t testify after receiving a pardon.
Just to be clear, everything you put on iCloud is encrypted so that someone who (for example) intercepts your Internet traffic can’t decode it.
However under some circumstances Apple has the keys to decode it, and they will comply with a subpoena. I seem to recall from the news of the famous shooter’s phone, that if you choose to backup your keys to the Cloud, then Apple can decode your stuff. But if you choose not to backup your keys, even Apple can’t get it. Is that still the case?
IANAL, but I think that there aren’t any direct equivalents between a federal crime and a state crime, so double-jeopardy would not be in effect. (But it may mean that prosecutors would get creative. In civil rights prosecutions, there were cases where a defendant would be acquitted of murder in a state court by a local bigoted jury, but convicted in federal court of “violating the civil rights” of the victim.
One of Manafort’s charges is failing to register as a foreign agent, and I would doubt that there’s a state equivalent of that; so he could get pardoned on that count with no consequences.
In general, though, Trump’s pardon threat (real or imagined) really just amounts to a delay and an annoyance in prosecuting the guilty; it probably wouldn’t keep anyone out of jail.
